izanori

I wish I played because this is kind of awesome LOL

I've seen multiple people see that having to choose between being queen/having a boyfriend sucks, but it doesn't bother me because I start saving often when I feel the LI is about to confess his love to me, and when it happens I read all of that ending and get my CG(s) and whatever, then load up the save from before that happened and focus on becoming queen without doing anything that'll make him do something rash like confess his undying love. (You can also reject the confession, by the way. In fact, you could get the option to confess first and he could reject you. Boy do I love RNGs.)

Because the goal of most Angelique games is to become queen, "they're all going to submit to me in <5 months" is referencing me becoming queen, and thus their boss, very soon. It's never taken me over 150 in-game days to beat a game, which is just below 5 months.

There are different universes with different guardians! The Holy/Sacred/etc. Bird Universe is where you meet the first set of guardians, the Holy/Sacred/etc. Beast is where we get the second set, and this game takes place in the Frozen Owl Universe. Slash mark between holy and sacred because the first two universes use different kanjis for their names but they mean nearly the same thing... I think later in the liveblog I may have called it the Sacred Bird Universe, but I'm making my mind up right now: The first one should be called Divine Bird and second Sacred Beast. Final answer.

Now I haven't figured out if this is mere coincedince or not, but when I had high intimacy with one character (Clavis) and another character (Lumiale) who was his closest friend when I started the game, I noticed eventually that when I checked his relationship chart thing his highest relationship was now some other guy, not Lumiale. So I wondered if by going on dates with them both I was tearing their relationship apart 😭 I haven't figured out how relationships between the NPCs change yet.

I hope the links are fixed now! I beat the game, so feel free to read the rest at your leisure. Not that there's a lot to read... I did not make the best decisions! LOLL

I finally finished Virche Evermore! I didn't 100% it, but I got most of all the CGs and was eager to move on to another game, so I will consider it done for now and move on to the next game. I'm playing Angelique Luminarise, which I thought would be a cakewalk after playing literally every other Angelique game, but... I'm not sure if I'm going to win this time 😭 But I'm having fun! Even if the queen exam is making me lose my mind. I've been liveblogging it on my personal site, if I'm allowed to self-promo.

I've been so busy with the semester finishing up that I'm still playing the Virche FD. I was hoping I'd have something new to announce finally this week, but alas... At the very least, I was starting to convince myself that Virche isn't even that good, but all the Ankou stuff in the FD changed my mind again. It's good. Ankou is very good. Lucas is my favorite character, but he got treated so dirty I may change my mind... and I mean, it's only fair, but comparing his route to the others will make you feel bitter, LOL. I know why everyone else gets to be happy, but I don't have to love it. (Or maybe I'm not the target audience? And there are people out there who actually enjoy their boyfriend oheavat va uryy sbe rgreavgl*. I shouldn't judge.)

*ROT13

Oh, I wasn't thinking "naive bully victim," more like "classic otaku," which can be done without being bothered at school or anything. Like by having really good grades that diverts attention from her obsession with [insert thing here], or by not being a student at all. 😁 Or someone alt would be called a loser by some people too, but if she has friends from the same/a similar subculture shielding her or is too tough-skinned to even entertain haters, bullying won't be prominent either.

I can vouch for Obscura. If you can handle every trigger warning in the world, it's peak. I'm interested in Royal Order... I may be buying.

It's funny it's rare for otome games to have a protag with such a hairstyle because. Well. Surely that's at least 30% of the player base over there. A genius MC would be cool, but to me what I want is a nerdy/geeky protag who looks it too. Meganekko MCs please!! If she's great at school that'd be great (I was like that too), but I wouldn't mind a loser-type MC either. I mean loser in a highly complimentary way, of course. I guess I'd like a girl who was more than "unremarkable beyond being kind and pretty cute."

I actually really enjoyed Ayumu and wished the game was longer, because not often do I get guys with pretty hair who also hate me! :DD And maybe if the game was longer it'd be better... and they'd use the extended time to explore gender, because the game's setup being what it is but there being no gender talks or yuri teases made my jaw drop. What the heck. Completely wasted concept. But yea, if I talk about Ayumu too long it'll be clear I have M tendencies--

Can I know some games that you think have strong art direction? I'm wondering if we have the same definition of "generic."

Top 4 I can think of are

1. Probably most common, the playboy. I used to love these, but over time I've started to grow tired of men who are keenly aware of how good-looking they are and use it to their advantage 😭 so now it depends on their motivations and how aggressive they are in their flirting whether I like them or not.
2. A calm guy who seems like the shining example of nobility or even divinity. Can be boring easily, I'm not gonna lie, but the eye candy will at least be good.
3. Cold, mysterious emo(/goth/some other third thing) guy, aka Peak. My fave here. And the trope the guy in my icon falls under. and last but certainly not least
4. Crossdressing guy who is flamboyant and you'd normally assume is gay. It's tricky because if the writer(s) are still a little homo/transphobic I'll get pissed off, but when done right it's 😙👌🏾 to me. My second fave. #bisexualitywin

Firstly, I won’t play anything that doesn’t have an LI with long hair. If he exists but his personality sucks, then I won’t play - but I like many kinds of personalities, and having long hair comes with its own usual tropes I’m familiar with, so not often do they have the looks but not personality. This also is an art thing. If the art style is so -_- it distracts me from imagining him as hot in my head, I’ll pass.

Once that’s covered, I look at the setting. I don’t care that much about organized crime (even if historical), contemporary corporate culture, or … most other regular contemporary settings. I like historical and fantasy stuff (low fantasy too). I can be won over by things set in this normal world if the basic circumstances are something that probably won’t happen to me, like a death game.

Writing makes or breaks a game for me, but previews can only tell you about word choice and diction, not how the story comes together or how the characters are developed… sigh.

I don't mind! I like to talk a lot about the things I like, and have barely anything to say on anything else.

I want to write a blog post somewhere when I'm finished with Angelique about it, so I've been thinking about where I first heard about it. But I really don't remember. I can guess and say that after I played my first otome game in 2020, Hakuoki, I likely read about the subgenre and found out about Angelique that way, because that would be such a me thing to do. If someone asked how I found out about Hakuoki I would have no clue at all*, as I didn't know it had an anime or anything. Anyways, I know I had the game on hand for literal years. The first time I tried to play it the Japanese was too hard and I didn't make it past the opening tutorial. Same the second time. For some reason in May of this year I was compelled to try one more time... and after powering through the wordy tutorial, it was pretty easy to understand! Studying pays off! And as you can see, I've basically gone through the entire series in half a year because the first game was that intriguing. I hesitate to say "good" because if it was good enough to make me play the rest of the games so quickly someone might think it was amazing, but it wasn't. It just felt like it had the makings of something that COULD be amazing. And I was correct; after a few tries they made a games that were ALMOST. ALMOST 10/10s. Nothing's perfect, so I'm not upset or anything. I'm very happy with the time I spent! ^_^

Between obsessively playing my games where I balance the affects of 9~18 emotionally unstable men, I would be on VNDB looking through the otome tag. Otome and RPG, Otome and SRPG, Otome and Sim, Otome and Map Movement, lots of things in hopes of finding more. And I looked at Ruby Party's list of games too, plus other games by other studios I found that I liked or thought sounded interesting... My backlog is huge. I'm eager to play them all, but I do wonder if I'm going to lose touch with the broader gaming community 😭 Oh well!

*Now that I'm thinking really hard about it, I think Steam recommended Hakuoki to me because I had played games with romance/dating in them and visual novels. I bought it nigh-instantly because Hijikata looked like my type, I like history, and I think anything with swords must be cool.

And to answer a question from earlier... I played Angelique (1994, SNES) and all PS1 games on my 3DS, the DS game on my DSi, and all other games on PS2 or Vita PC emulators. The Switch game will be played on my Switch.